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points by doginasuit 2 days ago | 0 comments
> Computer manufacturers devised a simple solution: add a TURBO button that would just slow your CPU down on demand.

I remember these! I could not figure out why it never seemed to make the computer faster and actually made it slower. TURBO was even written in italics to imply speed.

I suppose for some short time it may have actually overclocked the CPU, until the default clock speed caught up. After that, the turbo button was a lie.

Edit: Maybe I have it backwards, it sounds like on some machines it might have been in the underclocked condition when it was off. I just remember disappointing results with the machine that I used.

[–] NikolaNovak 2 days ago
I was a kid then but my memory of 80286 was:

* Turbo was default ON and was the regular marketed speed the cpu was designed to run on, for my (dad's:) PCs it was 12 and 16mhz I think

* Turning turbo off reduced speed significantly for software written with original cpu timing in mind (I think 8088 but that was just outside of my direct experience).

So perspective on turbo button is a little bit philosophic, is it half full or half empty:). But it did not give you any EXTRA boost, like over clocking OVER manufacturer design cpu speed.

[–] ndiddy 2 days ago
The turbo button came out of "turbo XT" PC clones, rather than being some sort of defined standard. Whether or not "turbo enabled" meant "runs at normal speed" or "runs at 4.77 mhz" was entirely dependent on how your case and motherboard happened to be wired, as there was no industry-wide standardization effort at that point. There's a great video on how PC clones evolved over time here if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGoM3Sqr2-w
[–] jerf 2 days ago
It also hung on for some time past when it made sense. My father had a 486/33MHz that had a "turbo" button. Turning off turbo could slow the clock down but it wouldn't do anything about the fact that the 486 is still fundamentally a better processor than either the 386 or the 286, running 2-3 times faster on the same instruction stream than a 386. So even with turbo off, the programs that was nominally supposed to help with still ran much faster than they were supposed to.
[–] NikolaNovak 2 days ago
Right; what I don't recall - once we had the 486 DX/2 and DX/4, I don't think Turbo button did anything about the multiplier between CPU and mobo. I think to your point it would do overall clock and other things to try to slow it down, with limited success.

Ahh the good old times :-)

[–] marcosdumay 2 days ago
The "nominal speed" of every 486 that it ran with the turbo off was 25MHz.

There were some programs made for that speed, but not nearly as many as when the problem happened for the first time on the 286. Most developers have learned timing practices at that point, and the APIs have improved a lot.

[–] here_to_learn 2 days ago
This was my memory of how Turbo was explained to me - keep it on if you want to go fast. We were all learning programming, so that's what we wanted - faster computers.
[–] 4gotunameagain 2 days ago
Commander Keen would be on steroids when I pressed the TURBO button on my friend's computer !!